Rodeo Wins Audience With Clowns, Barrel Racers, Bull Riders

The Sport Had A Record-breaking Year In 1992, According To Its Governing Association.

November 9, 1993|By Susan Marshall Special To The Sentinel

ALTOONA — That cowboy fantasy of Billy Crystal's in the movie City Slickers may have touched a national nerve.

Just take a look at the evidence: The movie and a few other western box office hits have ended decades of Stetson hat dormancy; country music is hotter than ever; and people are buying videotapes through the mail to learn how to line dance.

Not coincidentally, the cowboy sport of rodeo is on the upswing. According to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, 1992 was a record-breaking year for rodeos, with prize money, participants and attendance at new highs.

Hundreds of die-hard fans watched each of three shows at the past weekend's Florida Cowboys Association State Finals Rodeo in Altoona. The rodeo was held to benefit the Lake County Boys Ranch, a spread of rolling woodland bordering the Ocala National Forest.

Rodeo is a controversial sport long targeted by animal lovers, who attack the use of flank straps to make bulls and broncos buck and the use of ropes to yank calves' necks and tie their legs together after they've fallen.

''He's dead!'' cried a little girl in the Altoona audience after a calf had been jerked and thrown on its back, where it lay immobile. ''No,'' said her father. ''That's just part of the rodeo.''

Keith Weems is a young cowboy from Wauchula who was carried from the arena on a stretcher Friday night after his horse bucked him off and stepped on him.

At 20, he upholds, without rancor or defensiveness, the sport he inherited from his daddy.

Weems knows well the detractors; his aunt, Joan Sullivan of Groveland, is one. ''She hates rodeos and thinks I'm the looniest person in the world for doing this,'' he said.

Weems knows well this business, too. He chatters about the rules rodeo folks should follow to protect animals and riders, noting the flank strap is fleece lined and loose.

''Animal activists have done tests on rodeo animals' agility and movement that prove we don't hurt them,'' Weems said. ''This is nothing. This is a played-down version of what they do out in the pasture.''

Not unscathed himself, Weems cheerfully rattled off his list of broken bones and dislocations. Leg taped, he sat out the rest of the night in the stands with his fiancee, Christy, and his saddle.

As fiddlers fiddled, cowboys fell and clowns cavorted in the ring, a show played out on the near side of the fence, too. It was the crowd - regular folks who stand still during the national anthem; who catcall and applaud the daredevils; who sing along to songs with lines such as ''I'm just a hick from the sticks'' and ''What the world needs is a few more rednecks.''

A preteen boy groaned, ''Girls? Not girruls!'' when the cowgirl barrel race was announced. A small child shrieked, ''Hey, Hollywood,'' now and then to clown Hollywood Harris, as though he were the grandest celebrity on earth.

Thirty-year rodeo veteran Texas Bill Thorpe rode his 1,800-pound Brahma steer, Cherokee Charlie Plummer, complete with horns, hump and dewlap, but no saddle. Thorpe guided Charlie through a hoop of fire, which he said doesn't hurt because the fire is outside the hoop and Charlie is on the inside.

Some British visitors at their first rodeo declared it ''brilliant, absolutely brilliant.''